A little love in Lineage
by WinifredBrennan
Summary: Set during Season 5 of Angel. Fred is blind to the ways of love & the many suitors intent on wooing her. Spike adds some dating advice, that makes 3.  Knox, Wesley, Spike   Did I mention Wesley's father appears? Cannon. Fresley. During the episode Lineage
1. Ms Kitty Fantastico

**Chapter: 1 - Ms. Kitty Fantastico **

**Universe: Angel, Season 5. Cannon. **

**Pairing: Fred/Wes**

**Episodic Timeline: Lineage**

**A/N: This takes place during Lineage. The timeline may get a bit misconstrued but the basic plot shall remain the same. **

Fred rustled through a huge stack of papers on her desk, trying to balance a folder on her other arm, which was proving difficult since it was in a sling. The papers teetered and fell to the floor with a whoosh, sprawling everywhere.

"Oh forget it." Fred sighed exasperatedly. Suddenly, she heard a strange mewling noise. She paused, and listened, there it was again. She followed the sound until she found a tiny black and white kitten, sitting on the edge of her office.

"Well, hello there little guy." She crooned, picking the kitten up in her good hand. "Where on earth did you come from?" The kitten replied with a mew, and began licking her fingers. "Hey," Fred giggled. "That tickles."

"Oh, there that little bugger is." Spike came strolling into Fred's office, picking the kitten up by the scruff of its neck. "Little nipper got away from me. Was playing poker with some guys down in Accounts Receivable, and it just up and ran."

"You gamble with kittens?" Fred asked incredulously.

"Yeah, Pet. It's what the other guys want." Spike shrugged. "Besides what's one less little fur-ball in the world?" He turned to leave and Fred caught his shoulder with her good hand, snatching the kitten back up.

"Well, not this kitten. He's staying with me." She said, "Ain't that right little guy?"

Spike suppressed a laugh. "Its name's Daisy."

"Ah, well, girl then." Fred shrugged, instantly regretting that decision. She followed Spike out of her office and bumped into Knox.

"Ow!" Fred muttered. "Oh, hey." She smiled upon realizing who it was.

"Hi there. We doing animal testing now?" Knox asked, gesturing to the kitten.

"No!" Fred said, horrified. "Or uh, no I was just, well," She glanced up to her office. "I spilled some papers, do you think you could organize them for me?"

Knox nodded. "Sure thing boss. By the way, we still on for dinner tonight?"

Fred's cheeks flushed slightly. "Uh yeah, of course. Eight?"

"Mhm. Eight it is." Knox agreed, holding her gaze for a bit too long because Spike ahemed, making them both jump.

"See you tonight." Fred called as Spike led her out of the Science Department doors.

Fred jerked her good elbow out of Spike's grasp.

"What was that wanker going on about?" He asked, eyeing her skeptically.

"Knox? Oh he just, we were..."

"He's taking you out." Spike offered.

"Y-yeah." Fred said, smiling. "He's a nice guy."

"Oh, sure, right. Nice. Mhm. 'Cept he's been working for Evil Incorporated longer than who knows." Spike said sarcastically. "I thought you and Wesley...?"

Fred rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Why does everyone always think me and Wesley? Me and Wesley nothing. We're just good friends."

"Don't tell me you're that blind, pet. He's got the hots for you."

"Y'know oddly enough I don't remember asking for dating advice from you today, or any day for that matter." Fred retorted. Reaching her destination, she paused outside Wesley's office.

Wesley glanced between her and Spike. "Well, let's just pretend I didn't hear that last bit. How are you?" He gestured to Fred's bandaged arm.

"I'm great. They've got me taking a boat load of antibiotics, but I got the all clear." She turned to glare at Spike.

"Right." He cleared his throat. "I was just going."

Wesley caught Fred's gaze and they stood awkwardly in silence for a minute. "Cute kitten, where'd you get it?"

"Trust me, when I say you don't want to know." Fred flopped into one of the big comfy chairs and began petting the tiny kitten.

Wesley watched. "I'm sorry I didn't do a better job of protecting you."

Fred's attention snapped up. "Protecting me?"

"I mean you shouldn't have been there in the first place." Wesley turned away, glancing at the floor.

"Listen to you. Blaming yourself 'cuz poor Fred got hurt. Stop trying to sound valiant, you're coming off as a self-pitying child." Fred huffed, standing to leave.

Wesley glanced at her, anguish flickering in his eyes. Before Fred gasped as the kitten made a B-line for the lobby.

"Oh no. It'll get squashed." Fred said, starting after it.

Wesley, always the white-knight-wanna-be, ran after it. "Don't worry. I'll get it." He chased it into the lobby, catching the kitten before it reached the elevator doors. He scooped up the kitten. "There." He smiled triumphantly at Fred who came up behind him.

"Aw, a kitten." Harmony cooed from behind her post at the front desk.

Just then, the elevator doors spread open, and Wesley's triumphant smile faltered. "Hello, Father."

**A/N: Reviews are pretty : )**


	2. Father Knows Best

**Chapter: 2 - Father Knows Best **

**Universe: Angel, Season 5. Cannon-ish. **

**Pairing: Fred/Wes**

**Episodic Timeline: Lineage**

**A/N: Was brought to my attention that I accidentally made Spike corporeal... whoops. Ignoring that little misstep from Chapter 1, everything else should only deter from the Cannon slightly. My apologies. **

**Roger **Wyndam-Pryce glanced down at the tiny kitten. "Working hard, I see." His steely gaze traveled upwards to meet his son's baffled expression.

"Yes, uh, just catching this kitten for uh..." He trailed off, at a complete loss for words. One sentence from his father and Wesley already felt like an utter fool.

"He was catching it for me." Fred stepped up to shake his father's hand. "Fred Burkle. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Wesley's father nodded slightly. "The pleasure is all mine."

Fred smiled enchantingly, and took the kitten from the startled Wesley.

"What are you doing here?" Wesley asked, following his father's fast clip into the lobby.

Roger Wyndam-Pryce stopped, and turned to face his son. "Council business. Where's your office?"

Wesley blinked a few times before regaining his composure and pointing down the hall. "This way." He offered, turning to say goodbye to Fred, but she was already gone.

**"So,"** Wesley's father glanced around his son's office. "This is the great Wolfram and Hart." He shook his head.

"I know you probably don't condone my working here, but I promise you, we are doing good. Fighting evil from the belly of the beast." Wesley assured his father.

"Does it matter what I condone? You'd make your own choices regardless. No matter how misguided." Roger Wyndam-Pryce replied.

Hurt flickered through Wesley's blue eyes. He cleared his throat and regrouped. "So,"

"Yes, right. I'm here on official Council business. I assume you heard what happened." Wesley's father stated. "The Council asked me to come evaluate you. To see if you are fit to be reinstated. Although, we do view your tenure as Watcher as one of our most embarrassing mishaps."

"More embarrassing then everyone being blown up?" Wesley shook his head. "Don't waste your time. I'm perfectly happy right where I am."

Roger Wyndam-Pryce clucked his tongue in distaste. "Here. At Wolfram and Hart."

Wesley glared at the carpet. "Yes, here at Wolfram and Hart."

Wesley's father shook his head. "I see."

Wesley turned to his father, "I don't expect you to understand."

Just then, there was a light knock on the door and it opened slightly. "Uhm, Wesley?"

Suddenly a small smile broke out on Wesley's face. "Yes, Fred. Come in."

"We were just taking apart the cyborg. And it's really intricate. Like an M.C Escher picture, but with wires and circuits instead of birds." She cleared her throat. "Anyway, there's some symbols we need you to decipher, do you think you could...?"

Wesley nodded. "Certainly." He followed Fred out of his office; his father by his side.

"Cyborgs?" Roger Wyndam-Pryce questioned.

"Yes, we were attacked this morning while infiltrating a weapons ring." Wesley explained; he held the lab door open for Fred.

"Find anything else, Knox?" Fred asked, coming up next to the autopsy table that the cyborg was spread out on.

"Nope. But we'll hack into it eventually. The software uses some kind of binary system." Knox replied, glancing up from his computer screen."Be careful when you take a look at that, there seems to be some sort of fail-safe." Knox warned Wesley.

"A bomb as a self-destruct mechanism." Fred offered.

Wesley nodded and took a look inside the cyborg's gut.

Angel sidled up to the gang gathered around the autopsy table. "I'm Angel, it's a pleasure to..." He held his hand out.

Wesley's father glanced down at it. "You don't expect me to shake that."

Angel took his hand back. "Uhm, no." He turned to Wesley. "You get a read on any of that?"

Wesley had on his 'pondering' face. "The pattern indicates a Hellenic derivation. I'd say early Moracian, in fact. It's a directive of some sort, a battle prayer... or a binding spell. The full text is obscured." Wesley shifted the metal disk in order to get a better look. A rapid beeping began to sound through the lab; the metal disk clicked and whirred.

Roger Wyndam-Pryce snapped to attention. "What did you do?"

Wesley's eyes widened in panic, "Unless I'm very mistaken, I've just activated the bomb..."

**The **lab flew into a state of panic. "Get everybody out of here!" Wesley ordered. The employees began to flee; Angel led them out.

Fred fiddled with the bomb-mechanism. "There has to be some way to shut it down, a way to disconnect it maybe."

"I've got no clue!" Knox replied.

Wesley gripped Fred's wrist. "Fred, you've got to get out of here!"

Her brown eyes widened. "What about you?"

"I'll try to disable it in time, get as far away from the building-"

The beeping stopped abruptly. The panic ebbed just as quickly.

Everyone turned to Roger Wyndam-Pryce, who had saved the day.

"These symbols were, in fact, Dutrovic in origin, not Moracian, as you surmised. When interpreted correctly, these symbols spell out the proper procedure for handling the cyborg's power core, including this fail-safe, in case someone trips the self-destruct device. Quite simple really."

Wesley glanced down at the floor, feeling quite small, wishing he could just disappear into the tile beneath his shoes.

**A/N: Reviews are loved.**


	3. Topsy Turvy

**Chapter: 3 - Topsy Turvy**

**Universe: Angel, Season 5. Cannon. **

**Pairing: Fred/Wes**

**Episodic Timeline: Lineage**

**A/N: Finally got this chapter under my belt... that sounded wrong. Ahem. Moving on. **

**"How** old was he?" Fred asked curiously.

"Oh, he had to be about six or seven. I can't remember, he must've taken the scroll from my library." Roger Wyndam-Pryce chuckled.

Wesley walked up to them, confusion on his face.

"Wesley, I was just telling Winifred about the time that I caught you with the resurrection spell." His father said.

"Oh, right." Wesley replied.

"I couldn't remember, why were you doing that?" Roger Wyndam-Pryce asked.

Wesley cleared his throat, embarrassed. "A bird had flown into my windowpane, I think I was trying to bring it back to life."

"I can't believe you could even read a resurrection spell at age seven." Fred said incredulously.

"Yes, well..." Wesley shrugged, at a loss for what to say.

"Luckily, I stopped him or we would've had zombie birds pecking at his little eyeballs." Wesley's father added.

Fred giggled, and flashed Wesley a smile before heading back to the lab.

Wesley and his father traveled back to his office to do some research about the cyborg's origins.

Wesley looked through the source books to find the one he needed.

"That Winifred, she seemed to like you." Roger Wyndam-Pryce said.

"Yes, well, she's a very special person." Wesley cleared his throat and whispered into the source book. "Saitama Codex."

"Does she know how you feel about her? What did you just do?" Wesley's father asked.

"I'm not going to discuss this with you." Wesley shook his head, and continued researching. "These are source books, uh, templates. Um, I use them to call forth material in our archives."

Suddenly, the alarm began blaring and the lights flickered off.

"What's going on?" Roger Wyndam-Pryce demanded.

"We should probably go-" A cyborg burst into the office, Wesley grabbed a sword off the wall and blocked the chain attack that the cyborg threw at him, stabbing the ninja cyborg in the chest-plate. He turned to talk to his father, and suddenly everything went black.

**Fred** hurried down the hallway to go see what all the ruckus was about, bumping into Wesley's father. "We need to get you to safety." Fred instructed.

"Wesley's department has monitored some sort of spatial disturbance on the roof. He's gone to investigate. He asked me to tell Angel immediately."

**Wesley **noticed the cyborg he had attacked once he came to. He knelt down next to it and jabbed the sword a little deeper into its gut.

"Stop stop." The cyborg insisted.

"You can feel pain, good." Wesley replied, yanking the faceplate off the ninja cyborg to reveal a grotesque looking face, though more human than the silver mask. "Now, what is my father doing? What did he take?"

The cyborg shook its head. "No, no."

Wesley reached into its gut and activated the bomb. "Tell me or you'll be destroyed."

The cyborg's face filled with panic. Wesley now assumed it would tell him anything he asked.

**Fred **quickly entered the lobby, which was filled with fallen cyborgs. "Angel! Wesley needs you on the roof." She informed.

"Alright, Fred you see who's injured. Gunn you find out what happened with security. I'll go find Wes." Angel instructed.

"I'm coming with you." Roger Wyndam-Pryce added.

Angel and Wesley's father headed up to the roof...

"Wes? Wesley?" Angel calls, running out onto the roof. He glances around, confused.

Roger Wyndam-Pryce chuckles. "Hm, this was never about him. It was however about you." He reaches in his jacket to pull out a mystical staff of some kind. A swirl of light emanates from the tip and Angel collapses to the ground.

"Time for extraction." Roger Wyndam-Pryce said into an earpiece.

"Not quite." Wesley appeared on the roof, gun in hand, snatching the staff from his father. Roger Wyndam-Pryce points a gun right back at him.

"Leave Wesley, you'll never understand what we're trying to do here."

"You're using the Staff of Devosynn to take Angel's will, make him your slave. Your cyborgs panic a bit too easily." Wesley replied.

Fred appears on the roof. "Wesley!" She kneels down by Wesley's side. "What the hell is going on here?"

"Fred get out of here!" Wesley shouts urgently.

Wesley and his father were still facing off, guns pointed at one another.

"You know what that vampire is and what he's done, and you follow him anyway?" Roger Wyndam-Pryce shouted.

"Maybe I know what I'm doing. Why can't you trust that?" Wesley replied angrily.

Wesley's father scoffs. "You disgrace yourself with the council, you join forces with him, and you have the nerve to ask me why I can't trust you?"

Wesley, aching inwardly, replied: "I've done everything you ever asked, and I've done it well. You never had any use for me as a child, and you can't bear the thought of me as an adult. Tell me, father, what is it that galls you so, that I was never as good at the job as you... or that I just might be better?" Wesley gets his dig in, grinning at the small triumph.

"Hand me that staff." His father demands.

"No." Wesley replies, holding it over the edge of the building.

"No don't make me shoot you. Please believe me, I will kill you for it."

"Oh, I believe you. I was raised by you, after all." Wesley replies. "But I drop this, the crystal shatters, and Angel is restored. So I reckon whether I live or die, your plan has failed."

"I see. Well, then... maybe if it's someone you care about— " Roger Wyndam-Pryce grabs Fred, pointing his gun at her head.

Without a second of consideration, Wesley points his gun at his father and fires.

**A/N: Idk about this chapter. It's pretty much just an abbreviated version of the episode. There should be one or two more chapters. Comments appreciated : )**


	4. At Last

**Chapter: 4 - At Last **

**Universe: Angel, Season 5. Cannon. **

**Pairing: Fred/Wes**

**Episodic Timeline: Lineage**

**A/N: Last Chapter. Yay? **

**Wesley** glanced at his father's fallen body, dropping the gun. He stumbled behind a roof vent and threw up. Fred looked on, worried. Wesley stood and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Suddenly, electricity sparked around his father's body, it shimmered and faded into a cyborg. Wesley stared down, in complete disbelief.

**After **a short chat with Angel and Spike, Wesley retreated to his office, shuffling through some papers, absently. Fred quietly appeared in the doorway.

"Hey."

Wesley glanced up at her as she entered.

Fred stood awkwardly, glancing anywhere but at Wesley's eyes.

"Part of you knew, even if you can't admit it to yourself. Part of you knew it wasn't him." She said reassuringly.

Wesley shook his head. "No, I was sure it was him. You were there. I killed my father."

Fred stepped forward. "He was threatening your friends."

Wesley caught her gaze, and replied very evenly. "He was threatening you. He pointed a gun at you, Fred... so I shot him."

His gaze never wavered from hers.

Fred's face flickered through a myriad of emotions, before settling on slightly startled. "Wesley, I..."

Just then, Knox appeared in the doorway. "Oh, sorry to... interrupt. I... but... Fred, you're injured. I know we're supposed to work ourselves to death and all, but I'm guessing that the firm isn't enforcing that rule as strictly as it used you. And I thought I was gonna take you home..."

Fred glanced between Knox and Wesley. "Um, well, I... Wesley and I were just..."

"Go. You should go..." Wesley said softly, no conviction in his voice whatsoever.

Fred glanced between the two men, clearly torn. Knox made a "c'mon" gesture, but Fred stayed put. She shook her head. "I'm staying."

Both Knox and Wesley gaped at her. But Wesley wasn't about to insist on anything.

"Well, if you're sure..." Knox said, waiting for her to change her mind.

Fred turned to him and nodded. "I'm sure. See you tomorrow, Knox."

He shrugged and turned away, clearly disappointed. "Alright. See you later, boss." He shut the door behind him.

Fred walked across the office until all that was between her and Wesley was his desk.

It was hard for him to believe she had chosen to stay. That after all this time there could possibly be something... But no, he wouldn't get his hopes up.

"Fred..." Wesley began, not quite sure what to say.

Fred smiled slightly. "I hope it's alright that I..."

Wesley interrupted. "Of course." He returned her smile. She stepped around the desk, pausing just in front of him, waiting patiently. But maybe he had changed too much, given up hope that she could actually want-... Wesley stepped closer toward her and pulled her into a gentle kiss. She sighed in pleasure, placing her good hand on his shoulders and deepening the kiss. He groaned softly. Finally, finally, she was his. After waiting for so long.

Fred pulled back first, cheeks flushed. Wesley beamed at her.

"It's been awhile." She said softly. "You remember when, well, the last time we kissed?" Fred asked.

Wesley smiled. "How could I forget? It was..."

"Passionate." Fred finished, remember how he had kissed her hungrily, such longing in his eyes and she had yielded completely, at least for a while. "Well, I think it could use some practice." She hinted.

Wesley nodded, pulling her into his arms, carefully so as not to bump her bad arm. He kissed her again, this time more forcefully, holding her close, there was definitely tongue contact.

"Mmm." Fred stepped back, smiling. "It's late." She said, appearing apologetic.

"Of course, would you like me to take you home?" Wesley offered.

Fred shook her head, and reached down to entwine her fingers with his. Wesley, shocked beyond belief, understood completely, but had to be sure, "Are you... you want to come home with me?"

Fred nodded. "Yes."

Wesley kissed her again, in a moment of pure happiness.

They left his office hand-in-hand. Their future together just beginning.

**A/N: The End. Too cheesy? I dunno it felt a bit cheesy to me, but it was either that or y'know M rated, which I wanted to shy away from this time. Reviews are loved : )**


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